There are More Important Things than Eating
by UnnamedElement
Summary: Luna Lovegood has always lived in a complicated world. A world where rare creatures and flowers, moons and best friends, were more important than eating.
1. Sometimes I would forget to eat

I used to forget to eat for days at a time. Daddy would try to remind me, but I was a little girl who sometimes couldn't care less about what she should and shouldn't do. Eating to me wasn't something I had to do to help my body—it was something I would do when I wanted to, just like I would skip in the daisies and hold my hand to the butterflies when I liked. After Mum died, I stopped talking for a little bit, which was okay because Daddy did, too. Sometimes I would wake up in my little room at the tippy top of the stairs and look out the window towards the trees, waiting for the sun to cut through them, when I would hear Daddy banging pots and pans and then the sound of frying eggs and a tea kettle whistling. So I'd go down and sit at the kitchen table dutifully, knocking on my chair three times before sitting down as I have done since I was very very small, and ask him if he needed help. He always said no. He'd bring me eggs and a slice of toast and get his own plate and bring the tea leaves and boiled water and sit them on the table. I would pour myself a cup of tea, swing my bare little feet, pull at the lace on my purple and green nightgown, and watch my father. Sometimes he would eat his toast, but sometimes we'd both leave the table in silence and the cold eggs and toast would sit on the table getting soggy and crusty until dinnertime, when I may or may not have been hungry.

I always put on my clothes at 8:00 in the morning because that was when Daddy started the presses for the next day. A neat "sving, vashoom, clamp, auch-zing" thousands of times a day was what my daily rhythm was based on, and it took nearly 48 of them for me to put on my clothes. When I was ten, I always wore a combination of tights, skirts, sweaters, and little garden boots. My favorite tights were lilac and I liked best my blue and purple skirt with billywigs printed on it that Mum and I had designed when I was eight, even though it was far too short for a 10-year old. My favorite sweater was a soft, clover green, and I wore lots of jewelry when I felt like it. I had five pairs of galoshes—purple, black, green, red, and yellow—and one pair of dirty work boots which I liked very much.

Sometimes after I dressed I would run and run and run as far and fast as I could. I would spin and gallop and leap and stare at the sky as it became a blur of white and blue and I would travel through space and time because I simply never kept track of it so much when I ran like that. Sometimes I would run all the way through the village to the other side and down towards the Burrow where I would watch the twins taunt Ronald in the yard and Ginny sit on her mother's lap while they watched Charlie and Bill practice flying. Sometimes this made me very sad to see Ginny with her mum, and I would forget about the sky and running and the beauty of the trees and the butterflies and I would stop. And sometimes I stared. And a few times I cried.

Mrs. Weasley didn't mind. So sometimes she made ginger biscuits for Ginny, Ron, and me. They were very nice biscuits, but I only sometimes like ginger and I hardly ever found eating very interesting, so I made a game of catching the garden gnomes with them, and when I had found the cutest one, I would wave goodbye to the Weasleys, and run right on home with it. Sometimes I would climb to the top of a pretty tree in the woods and sit amongst the thinnest and weakest branches just to feel airless, and my gnome would enjoy that sometimes, too. The air and the trees, the sky and that grouchy little gnome that I ended up naming Reginald made me happy—if only for a moment—as I watched the breeze ruffle the skirt around my knobbly knees, my dirty work boots kicking back and forth, with the sun above my head, and butterflies in my mind, and flowers too if I could manage it.

Sometimes I would forget to come home, and I would watch all the stars rise. Right after mother's death, Daddy sometimes forgot to come find me, but that was okay, because I always knew when I was needed. It wasn't until I was eleven that he really started paying attention again. By then, I'd found all his books on magical creatures and all mum's books on experimental charms, and we had something to talk about again.

We were both very happy.

But I still wouldn't eat.


	2. It consumed me and I consumed nothing

My first year at Hogwarts, I remained oblivious to the level to which my oddness exceeded that of the average first year. I was unbothered when I was sorted into Ravenclaw—it was nice to be acknowledged for one's intelligence occasionally—and I hadn't a problem with the other girls in my dormitory. I did regret not getting to see Ginny Weasley more often as she was the only girl I knew at the school, but I saw her in potions and charms and some other sundry classes, so it was alright.

It was odd, though, because sometimes I didn't much feel like being at school. I always did my work and studied, but I could never bring myself to fully commit my brain to the memorization of pointless facts and statistics. It was boring; it was easy—this combination made it uncannily difficult. I would often find myself standing on my head in the corner of the library during dinnertime, my feet balancing on the wall and my elbows steady on the floor as my face, I am sure, turned dreadfully red and I memorized my history lesson in relative entertainment. No one ever saw me, which was good because my skirt often fell over my head. Being in the library on my head in a corner during dinnertime obviously prevented me from being in attendance at the Great Hall, and thus my habit of not eating continued.

Regardless, I studied and I did well. However, I didn't much care. In fact, I didn't much care about anything in regards to the school—minus the astronomy tower which was incredible and I'd often sneak out in a very sly manner and run to the top of the school, camping out and staring at the stars and the moon and sometimes even when it was cold I would do this or if it was raining because it felt so good and was ever so liberating, like being with that gnome in the tree, except I was never obliged to come down—until the Chamber of Secrets started. It wasn't until Ginny stopped talking to me and got all funny that I really began to clue back into reality. Things were going wrong in Hogwarts. People were getting hurt. Friends and families were being ripped apart—even before I knew Hermione, Ron, and Harry I could tell how much it hurt but I didn't know what to do to make it better. So I did what I could. I followed Ginny around, except at dinner when I would be in the library studying.

I found out, in fact, a great deal about Ginny, but not much to do with whatever was hurting her. It consumed me and I, therefore, consumed nothing. It was an odd occurrence of events that I thought nothing of until I passed out one day in potions class. I don't remember so much, just a strangled, "Luna!" from Ginny before I fell off my stool and a brief smattering of laughter as my head sounded a sharp _crack_ on the floor, and I passed into darkness. Ginny told me later that she had seldom seen Professor Snape so concerned, that he immediately dismissed the class and scooped me up, rushing to the hospital wing. That I can hardly believe, though I must because I know that sometimes people who seem bad aren't really bad and even people who might be a little bad cannot resist an act of humanitarianism when it is necessary of them.

When I woke up I was, of course, in the hospital wing, in the bed closest to Madam Pomfrey's office. I couldn't see very far out of the bed because the curtains were pulled tight around it, but I knew Hermione would be a few beds down from me and the Clearwater girl that Percival liked ever so much. I stared at the ceiling for a few minutes before I heard the muffled "click-clack-click-clack-click-clack" of Madam Pomfrey's low heels on the polished stone approaching my bed. I was eleven and had found this noise very funny ever since I was a little girl—like the claws of little dragon's scuttling back and forth across the floor, chasing each other and rolling about in a playful battle—so I giggled, and the curtain was ripped back.

And that's when I received the longest lecture of my life.

She pulled up a chair and began talking at me, pointing to a little bag suspended beside my bed and a pack of some sort attached neatly to my arm—and into it! I thought with mild surprise—and how I had to take care of myself if I was going to stay at school.

I nodded and said okay like I always do. Sometimes I think it's easier to do that and to think of something better, like the sky and the earth or a flower, than actually listen to the severity of things. Of course, I have since learned better, but I am much older and, I would like to think, much wiser now.

Three days letter, I was released from the hospital wing with a little plant Ginny Weasley had grown in herbology class to accompany me. Three days later, Ginny Weasley disappeared into the Chamber of Secrets and everybody forgot about Loony Lovegood's episode. And, unfortunately, so did I.


End file.
